Some were drunk.
Some were tearful.
All were lonesome.
The triangle bells of Tom Poinsett were the greatest boon to the flesh business since the discovery of gold itself. While they played, the tide of lonesome males, fresh from giving gold dust to the infant Jesus, brought the remainder of it to be exchanged for any soft, warm, sympathetic breast upon which they might lay their sorrowful heads and forget their homesickness.
Robert Baysinger was among these.
Remaining at the theater until the lanterns were being extinguished, he had watched Sarah leave with the marshal; the Robinsons leave with their baby; the Dawkins with their family; even Mrs. Roundtree with a group of her lodgers. As the theater emptied, Robert’s solitariness closed in. Who was there for him in this town, save one for whose company he must pay? Damn the woman for her continued aloofness. He should disdain her, but found himself unable. He had, after all, come here largely because of her.
Forlornly he donned his coat and hat, took up his cane and went from the hall into the street, where the sound of the chimes lifted his face to the sky and seemed to widen the spaces between his bones. He stopped a minute, pulling on his capeskin gloves, letting the hymn shimmer through him. At home there had been church spires with bells that tolled the hour. Sometimes, as a child, they would awaken him in the mornings.
Three in a bed they’d slept—he, Walt and Franklin. Seemed like there were never enough beds, nor food, nor money. Sometimes not even enough love. Perhaps he was wrong about that: maybe the shortness had not been of love itself, but of the time to show it.
When he remembered his parents, he pictured them overworked and weary. It seemed they’d never had time to relax. His father labored fourteen hours a day in an effort to scrape together enough money to provide for his outsized family, which seemed to increase by one head per year. Ten hours a day Edward Baysinger worked as a trunkmaker at Arndson’s Leather Factory; evenings, in a tiny shop behind their house, he fashioned wooden stocks for brushes on a foot-powered wood lathe. Sometimes he sharpened knives and shears. Sometimes he repaired chair rungs. Sometimes he bought and sold bone. Always he collected fat and tallow which his wife, Genevieve, brewed into yellow lye soap and sold to supplement the family’s income, which never seemed adequate.
Whatever the secondary labor, the boys were always expected to help. They carted wood; sold wood shavings for kindling; fashioned bone handles for toothbrushes; begged waste fats door to door; peddled soap door to door, and as each one grew old enough, went to work in Arndson’s Leather Factory. The only job the boys escaped was stirring and cutting the soap, which fell to the two girls of the family, who also helped their mother with the never-ending laundry and cooking for the tribe of thirteen.
By the time Robert was twelve he knew he wanted something better for himself than the endless toil and struggle he witnessed in his parents. His mother looked haggard and shriveled by the time she was thirty. His father’s disposition became grumpier and more cynical in relationship to his growing responsibilities.
Though school was considered a luxury by Genevieve and Edward Baysinger, their son Robert fought for the right to continue his studies at the age when the others went into the factory. It was at school he met the Merritt girls. And later, when he was old enough to go begging grease and fat from the back doors of kitchens for his mother’s soap pot, he knocked one day upon a strange door and to his surprise, it was answered by Adelaide Merritt.
“Why, Robert!” she had said. “Hello!”
He was chagrined to have to ask one of his schoolmates for the runoff from their frying pans, but Adelaide was sweet and friendly. She took him inside to a wondrously uncrowded kitchen where an uncorseted, buxom woman named Mrs. Smith found a good-sized tin of leftover grease and offered it along with fresh apple cakes and cold milk. These Robert shared with Addie Merritt at a grand round table covered with a crocheted cloth and decorated with a bouquet of daisies and fresh, red, pungent basil, which the housekeeper said kept the spiders and ants from visiting her kitchen.
From the first Robert was taken with all that space for only four people. Space, order, fastidiousness and quiet. Such marvelous quiet. Where he lived total quiet prevailed only in the deepest hours of the night, and even then the place was likely to rumble with snoring from one quarter or another. Around Addie’s table were only four chairs instead of thirteen. On the range was one teakettle instead of three. In a cookie jar on the sideboard was an entire batch of snickerdoodles of which he was invited to partake at will after he finished his apple cake. In his entire life he’d never known such plenty, for at the Baysinger house cookies were rare and never lasted long enough to be stored in a jar.
And Addie’s house was so clean! The floor had no footmarks, the windows no handprints, the curtains were starched and the rag rug at the kitchen door looked as though no one had ever stepped on it. In the parlor the antimacassars were perfectly centered on the sofa, the reading materials were stacked in bookshelves and folded in magazine racks; Mr. Merritt’s pipes and tobaccos were neatly housed in a smoking stand, and there was space enough for a fern wider than the spread of a man’s two arms. The room also held the ultimate luxury: a spinet. Robert tried to imagine his parents ever accumulating enough extra money to afford a spinet. The idea was preposterous.
Beside the piano stood a high chest of twenty skinny drawers containing sheet music. Addie selected some and played for him—a mazurka, “Für Elise” and “Londonderry Air”—sitting straight as a gopher with her fingers curled precisely over the keys. Her blond hair was looped up from her ears into a plaid moiré ribbon from which it flowed down her back in gentle curves. She was wearing a blue dress with a white lace collar. His eyes were equally taken by the girl, the room and the spinet. A large white cat came padding in and preened himself against Addie’s ankles. She stopped playing to scoop him up and introduce him as Ruler before handing him to Robert and resuming her song.
Everything about that evening remained indelibly in Robert’s memory. Addie’s quiet reserve—so much greater than that of most girls her age that it made her seem older than her nine years; the obvious quality of every furnishing in the house; the tranquillity which prevailed. Even when Mrs. Smith came into the parlor and announced that it was late and time for Robert to leave and for Addie to retire, Addie accepted the order with grace far above her years.
She saw him to the front door, took Ruler from his arms and invited him to come back anytime. Without compunction, as if the difference in their ages and class did not exist, she said, “I’ll let you know when Mrs. Smith has another batch of grease saved up and you can come and collect it.”
Though Addie turned a blind eye to the differences in their class, Robert was stung afresh as he walked away. No, his parents would never have a spinet, nor luxuries of any kind, but from that first evening Robert spent in the Merritt house he vowed he would have them aplenty.
The next time he went there Sarah was at home. At fourteen, she was one year older than Robert and so much better acquainted, since on alternate years they had shared the same teacher and classroom—their school was arranged with two grades per room. Sarah was a brain. She won every spelling bee ever held, partook in every essay contest (often winning first prize), finished all her schoolwork in the time allotted, so carried books home only by choice. She often helped the children of the younger classes with their arithmetic, and when the teacher left the room was appointed monitor.
At home she spent all her time reading, or writing in a composition book, which she carried with her at all times. She had to be encouraged to play a duet on the spinet with Addie, doing so finally with a humph and a sigh as if put upon. Once she joined the music, however, she seemed a good sport (though she was not as natural on the piano as Addie), and after that, when Robert visited, the three of them formed a trio of friendship that made his visits there even more anticipated.
Addie—he discovered—was moody. At t
imes she would be morose and withdrawn, taking all of Sarah’s and Robert’s best efforts at clowning to draw her from her glumness and make her laugh. They went on picnics together in the summer, Mrs. Smith providing them with enticing delicacies packed in a wicker basket with a linen liner: cucumber and minced ham sandwiches, cheese straws, raspberry tarts and a delectable specialty called chutree, made of vinegared, sugared and spiced strawberries, favored particularly by Robert, who (while the girls turned up their noses) spread the chutree on Mrs. Smith’s crusty white bread and thought it the finest treat one could hope to eat.
In winter they skated on Stepman’s millpond, where large groups of young people met and built fires and drank hot peach punch spiced with cinnamon sticks. Many evenings Robert and Addie studied together while Sarah wrote in her journal. Often Sarah and Robert both helped Addie, who was much slower to learn and never quite understood many of the advanced mathematics problems they solved for her, nor how to properly parse a sentence, nor the reason for learning any of these things.
Their father was seldom home. When he was, the trio of young people would leave him to whatever room he chose— parlor or kitchen—moving to the opposite room to carry on whatever activities they were pursuing. Sarah introduced Robert to Isaac Merritt the first time.
“Father, this is our friend Robert Baysinger. He’s come to study. We’re helping Addie with her numbers.”
“Robert,” the older man had said, offering a handshake. He was an impressive man with straight, tall stature and a cleanshaven face, wearing a three-piece business suit trimmed by a linked gold watch fob. “Welcome. It’s always seemed to me that Sarah never invited enough young people to the house. I’m glad to see she’s made a new friend.”
His assumption that Robert was there primarily as Sarah’s friend went uncorrected, for at the time he was as much her friend as Addie’s. Anything else would have been improper, given Addie’s age. Yet the undercurrent of attraction between the younger two was already beginning to bloom.
Addie bloomed, too. Robert watched it happen, remaining the soul of propriety while her thinness took on the first gentle turns of puberty and the fuller curves beyond. Her hair touched her waist, curling at the tips like white wine hitting the bottom of a glass. Her face lost its childish appeal to the greater one of adult beauty. But as she grew older she seemed to distance herself from him and Sarah. More often she retreated into the puzzling realm of reticence and cheerlessness. She played the spinet with a look of disassociation—by now she was playing Mendelssohn—breaking into occasional passages when she displayed a nearly vitriolic passion. The first time it happened Robert became frightened and touched her shoulders to stop her. “Addie, what is it that’s bothering you?”
She withdrew her hands from the keyboard as if it had suddenly burned her and tucked them into the folds of her skirt.
“Nothing.” The word emerged toneless.
Sarah was seated by the gas lamp, wearing her spectacles, writing in her composition book. Mrs. Smith was in the kitchen, stitching beside the stove. Robert rubbed Addie’s shoulders.
“I think I’ll leave now. Walk me to the door,” he requested.
Addie rose from the piano stool, lifeless but correct.
“Good night, Sarah,” Robert called.
She looked up. “Oh... good night.”
In the shadows of the front entry where the stairwell emptied down from above, he buttoned his jacket while Addie waited with that same remote look on her face, her eyes fixed upon the carved work on the umbrella stand.
“Addie,” he told her, “perhaps I shouldn’t come anymore.”
Her ennui vanished. “Oh no, Robert!” Her eyes widened in distress. “Whatever would I do without you!” Without warning, she threw her arms around his neck and gripped him quite desperately. “Dear Robert, you’re the best thing in my life, don’t you see?” Her breath came fast, almost terrified. He closed his arms across her back and held her for the first time ever. She was fifteen at the time, he eighteen, and miserable with unexpressed love. He had at some time during their friendship decided he could not openly court her until she reached age sixteen. By then he might even have prospects and could ask her to marry. Meanwhile, he resisted the flare of desire and kept his hands on her back.
“Sometimes you don’t seem to remember I’m in the room.”
“I do... oh I do. Come again on Thursday the way you always do. Please, Robert, say you will.”
“Of course I will. But I want to make you happy, and more often lately, I don’t know how.”
“You do, Robert. Please believe me.”
Heroically, he put her from him. How beautiful her eyes and mouth, even when dismayed. In the deep shadows where they stood she gazed at him with undisguised affection and true fear at the thought of losing him.
“You do make me happy. I should die if I were to lose you.”
He thought he should die if he could not kiss her.
“Addie,” he whispered, touching her face with both hands, holding it with exquisite tenderness. He lowered his head and she stretched to meet his first kiss as if she, too, had suffered waiting for it. He felt her mouth tremble beneath his, though he stood carefully disjoined from her body, bending to reach her. Tens of times he had resisted this impulse and the greater one that followed. He embraced her fully, opened his mouth, and to his delight, she responded ardently.
With an effort he ended the kiss and stepped back.
Even in the subdued light he could tell she blushed.
“I think you should go now, Robert.”
He tried to lift her chin, but she pulled it sharply aside and said, “Don’t!”
“But Addie—”
“Don’t, I said.” She wouldn’t lift her head. “We must not do this anymore.”
Five months passed before they kissed again. They did so on a bitter cold January night out beside the woodpile where they’d made excuses to go. She had thrown on an unbuttoned coat; he had followed in his shirtsleeves. She had bent forward to begin stacking logs on her arm when he gripped her elbow and said, “Addie...”
She straightened, swinging about, meeting his eyes with a mixture of alarm and innocent craving. There wasn’t a doubt in the world what was on both their minds.
He took the stovewood from her arms, piece by piece, and tossed it onto the pile.
“No,” she whispered. “Robert... no...,” wedging the butt of one hand against his chest as he gripped her arms in a manner indicating he’d brook no refusal.
“I kissed more girls before I was thirteen than in all the years since. Because of you, Addie... because I was waiting for you. Ever since the first day I came into your house and you played the piano for me I’ve been waiting for you to grow up. Well, you’re almost there, so don’t say no, Addie.”
The kiss began as a struggle and ended in submission.
As with the first time, their years of repression came to bear upon them, lending their juncture a desperation.
He cupped her head.
She gripped his shirt.
He opened his mouth.
She opened hers.
He opened her coat and stepped against her.
But he denied himself the places he would touch, clasping her against his tumescent body with only the consolation of freeing two buttons between her shoulder blades, slipping his hand inside against her warm back, circling her waist with the opposite arm, kissing her mouth passionately.
She stopped it, tearing away, averting her face, the top of her head to his chest. They were both panting.
He kneaded her shoulders while rebellion built in his throat.
“Don’t do that, Addie. You did that last time. Why should you feel ashamed?”
She swung her head remorsefully. He struggled to understand her disproportionate remorse. He struggled with anger that boiled up out of nowhere because he could not understand her, nor stop loving her.
“Addie, I’ve kissed you, nothing more. What’s
wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” She was crying... silently... all by herself ... crying with her sweet-smelling hair against his chest while he was left to wonder and soothe.
“Has your father warned you against this? Is that it?”
She made negative motions with her head.
“Are you afraid I’ll go further? Addie, I wouldn’t, not unless you wanted to, too.”
The head wagging continued.
“Are you afraid we’ll be discovered, or that Sarah might know, or be jealous, or what? What is it, Addie? You wouldn’t cry like this over just a kiss.”
She pulled back and dried her eyes as if she’d gathered a reserve of implacability from deep within. “You take the wood in, Robert, will you please? Tell Sarah I’m not feeling well and that I went upstairs to bed.”
“Addie, wait...”
She’d already put space between them, walking backward toward the side of the house and the front door.
“It’s not you, Robert, it’s me. Please believe me, you’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Addie, I promise I won’t kiss you that way again... please, don’t go in... Addie, I’m sorry... I love you... Addie?... Addie, please stay.”
She had reached the corner of the house and paused, still facing him, her dark coat like a bloodspill on the dead, snow-less grass. “You’d better not love me, Robert. You’ll be sorry if you do.”
He took a step toward her and she ran around the corner while he gave up the chase before it began, wilting with frustration, arms hanging loosely, head lolling back while he closed his eyes. He didn’t understand her. How could he when she refused to confide the source of her fears? Perhaps she feared a total physical relinquishment and its probable outcome. What woman would not, considering the disgrace of pregnancy without wedlock? He was eighteen already and she only fifteen, not a woman at all, but a nubile young girl, afraid of her own budding sexuality. She kissed like a woman who loved it, yearned like a woman who wanted more, but backed off like the girl she was.